Several points need to be addressed:

1) Vaping with your mask overloads it with material to be filtered out, resulting in that cloud. Masks are not designed with vapers/smokers in mind.

2)Engineering solutions vs PPE: in this context, you would need to maintain pressure differentials between people such that each person was supplied with fresh air in such a manner as to prevent their air supply contaminating anyone else's air supply. This is not reasonably practicable, and thus an engineered solution is not considered. This is a situation where PPE actually comes out as the first port of call. I deal with similar situations daily in laboratories, and for standard bench work, PPE use the first defence. Under Covid Alert Levels 3 and 4, we wear masks in the laboratories as well as social distancing.

3) Masks and Glasses: wear the mask high up the nose so it almost feels like it is under the eyes. This decreases the likelihood of fogging to near nil. I've used this technique for several decades. Some wearers will need to have fit testing and training on correct use.

4) Fainting while wearing masks? The only known mechanism for this is where a person develops feelings of anxiety due to the increased resistance experienced when breathing through a filter and they hyperventilate. The mask itself does not prevent oxygen getting in or carbon dioxide getting out, irrespective of the activity levels of the wearer. This is established by measuring tissue oxygenation levels in people wearing and not wearing masks at varying levels of activity. Also of note is that there has never been a recorded case of any worker in a surgical theatre or indeed in any part of a hospital fainting while wearing a mask. There are also no reports from the supermarket distribution centres where their workers are physically active and wearing masks.

Steve H has a good idea for those workplaces for which the mask mandate does not apply due to their not being public facing. I understand several places operate like this, including the supermarket distribution centres.

Those aren't the only diagrams in the records...

Radiation Safety...

The Safety Officer knows that the records were prepared by the Engineers and Architects who built the building, and that they measured it because the records required accurate measurements.

Attached is surveillance camera footage of an incident at a petrol station that I use in training to demonstrate the hazards of static electricity. I draw people's attention to the fact that the person in video returned to their seat in their car after they started refuelling, and made themselves comfortable. They got out when the bowser stopped and adjusted their clothing before they went to take the bowser from their car. A static discharge ignited fuel vapours.
The act of 'making themselves comfortable" caused generation of static within their clothing. The nature of their clothing adjustments promoted movement of the charge into their arms, increasing the static potential.
How does this relate to use of cell phones on a petrol forecourt? The average person wants to make themselves more comfortable when they fiddle with their phones, so they tend to go and sit in their car, the move about to make themselves comfortable...
Asking people to not use cell phones on the forecourt is now more associated with attempting a form of behaviour modification to prevent another activity - returning to the vehicle.

I believe the video is sufficient an answer to the question about static electricity and its hazards.

You're welcome...

My workplace does the same, and we have the complicating factor that several of our workspaces with extremes of temperature (as high as 40C when it was 28C outside) are Level 2 Containment facilities, with restrictions on what can be done within the facilities - eating a banana as Andrew suggested constitutes a breach of containment for which we risk having our facility shut down by our regulator. Consumption of actual food requires that we leave our work areas to consume it, then return. While we can have a cold water fountain in the gown-up area, storage of food is prohibited. Something that does not work particularly well for a laboratory facility will certainly be worse for a prison,

The OIA released by National does not have any risk assessments (with the associated physical evidence), nor does it have any information about whether incidents had occurred as a result of the temperatures. This is the information that I would be using to determine whether or not action had to be taken in my own workplace.

To put it another way Andrew, the reason you don't see anything in the OIA response that suggests anything other than waste of money is that the OIA response answered a specific question, and that question only. No one bothered to follow up and ask Corrections to present the evidence that justified the expenditure. There's a website for OIA requests if you are so inclined (https://fyi.org.nz/) - I've been watching to see if anyone will file such a request, will it be you? If you do, make it better than the time-waster who asked what Corrections favourite flavour slushie was.

I will no longer be bothering with this topic.

Here's a thing you don't know about me Andrew, I can't type for toffee, and when I was a teacher, I taught kids how to deal with problems like that. I considered the possibility of a typo, and dismissed it on the basis someone who knows they have issues with their typing should be very careful.

But back to the topic - the only document in public forum is the OIA response to National - I have a copy of it. At no point can the matters you have suggested be considered to be supported by the evidence. This is particularly the case with your assertion that there was no consequential harm from the extremes in temperature.

If you think the distribution of machines is odd, it reflects the segregated layout of prisons. I assure you that you would be shocked at the numbers of coffee machines some schools I have worked at have. The ratios are similar, and they are not cheap machines either. Based on the per unit prices, I suspect there are a few details regarding the machines that make them atypical, but I do not have sufficient interest in finding out.

The clickbait reference was to the entire story pushed by National. I've spend too long in the public service to be tolerant of being used as a political football by politicians who think it acceptable to use public servants as some sort of soft target because the public servants so targeted are not permitted by the State Sector Act to reply.

To be blunt Andrew, you are presenting a strawman argument, as Correction's OIA response to National does not include the associated risk or hazard assessments as National had not asked for them. So unless you had filed your own OIA request for those specific documents, your comments about their risk assessment process are entirely invalid.

As an aside, you appear to have made a typo in your comments about temperature data - the OIA response refers to records in Wellington going back to 1927, not 2017.

While those temperatures may not look impressively high, if you are in a confined space with limited air movement, temperatures inside can actually be higher than the temperatures recorded at weather monitoring stations outside. I have laboratories that have on occasion been 12 degrees above the outside temperatures - this data is from temperature loggers I had installed in the labs, and compared with a nearby weather-station my employer owns. Even if air-con is used, it struggles if it was designed for the presence of a particular number of people, and someone has decided to increase the number of people present for some reason. The result will be that the temperature increases (despite air-con in some residential units in prisons), and people in heavy clothing will experience issues with that temperature.

You then proceeded to misinterpret the first aid information. I had made reference to that because you had chosen to make a comment suggesting use of a warm drink as a remedy. Where a person shows symptoms of heat exhaustion, you do not supply them with warm drinks. This applies also when you only have a suspicion that something is going on. It's called being cautious. Were you to pull such a stunt in my workplace, I would be instructing you to leave the area.

Over all, your reasoning is deeply flawed, as it is based on supposition about documents to which you do not have access (namely the risk assessments), inadequate understanding of the differentials between indoor and outdoor temperatures on hot days (and the associated limitations on air-con), and the misinterpretation of Correction's use of the word 'performance' in that you think it requires performance management rather than their attempt to modify the risk profile of the work environment.

The whole story was a petty piece of clickbait, and too many people fell for it. Unless the actual risk assessments are analysed, critics' commentary is invalid.

Unless the temperature of the environment is higher than a human's body temperature, the environmental contribution to heat exhaustion is not a factor. With this, one does not cook from the outside in as you put it. A person with heat exhaustion is not able to regulate their body temperature, and a contributing cause to this is the fact that there is either inadequate sweating response, or in this case sweating is ineffectual due to the clothing that is worn. In the absence of adequate cooling, the core temperature rises as there is no method by which the heat may be lost. There is a runaway thermal effect with the core temperature continuing to rise until a medical event occurs. This is noted as having occurred in the case of Corrections staff.

Corrections very clearly identified that they examined the use of the machines overseas - a fact that was omitted from National's responses. They and the unions cited the research, with the OIA response to National stating that research showed that iced beverages were three times more effective than chilled water for reducing core temperature. My knowledge of the sports medicine comes from colleagues who work in nutritional science and who work with sports medicine specialists. As an aside, I believe that you should check the first aid treatment for heat exhaustion, as it specifies use of cool or cold liquid. It also suggests commercial sports drinks can be used (Red Cross)

The use of iced beverages was, as I have stated, identified by Corrections as the more effective option for preventative action against heat exhaustion.

If your concern is sugar, don't use the sugared option. I believe that I stated that very clearly, and noted that stalls at the National Safety Show have had these sugar-free options available for people to try.

If you are still concerned about the effect of over-consumption of water, set your mind at ease. The only circumstances in which a person has been known to drop dead as a result of excessive consumption of water was after they had popped some MDMA pills and drank too much water. This occurs because the MDMA turns off the feedback system that causes the sense of thirst to turn off when the body is satisfactorily rehydrated.

Seems some of the misinformation in the mainstream media has made it's way here, with talk about the sugar content of 'slushies' and how there were no issues the previous summer.

The iced-beverage machines have been purchased since 2017 (according to the copy of the OIA response on the National Party website, meaning that the decision to purchase was made after the summer referred to. The fact was that, according to the union, corrections officers did suffer medical events, including being taken to hospital for out-patient treatment for heat exhaustion. The decision to purchase the machines was made after examining the use of similar machines overseas, as well as reports in medical literature that identified that iced-beverages were more effective in cooling people wearing the type of PPE corrections officers wear while on duty than standard cold water. This applies to both after-the-event cooling of an overheated worker, and pre-emptive cooling of a worker: both of these points are well known in sports science.

As for the sugar content - just because the 'slushie' you buy from the local takeaway joint is loaded with enough sugar to trigger hyperglycaemia, it does not automatically follow that the corrections officers are drinking their way into Type 2 Diabetes. NZ Safety stocks rehydration drinks that can also be made into iced-drinks, and these can be zero-sugar. In fact, if anyone in this forum has been to the National Safety Show, you will have had the opportunity to try these sugar-free drinks.

Expiry dates are only on those items that have been sterilised - after the date, the item can no longer be guaranteed to be sterile, and there is a risk (increasing as time passes) of infection should the items be used. As others have noted, there should be regular inspections of items, with particular attention paid to the seals of products, if the seal is broken on a sterilised product, it is not to be treated as though it is still sterile - there is a high risk of infection from such a product (the air contains a surprising number of things that can cause infections in wounds, and a non-sterile dressing produces a humid environment that they find ideal for growth).
Regarding the short date on supplies - this is becoming a problem with some suppliers - I've encountered it myself at work, and we sent the goods back requiring they replace them with goods that actually had a usable shelf-life.

Logically, since a 'Juicer' is performing a task for hire or for reward, if they were testing the unit and the wheels locked, then it would be something that required examination to determine whether or not Lime had prior knowledge of the adverse event having occurred before the incident with their 'Juicer'. In the event of the prior knowledge of a problem, then there would logically be a case to answer.
On Radio NZ Checkpoint today, they interviewed a Auckland Councillor (I forget who - maybe Chris Darby?), and he identified that Lime had said they had no knowledge of events occurring prior to a couple of weeks ago. Checkpoint raised the point that they had interviewed people who claimed to have experienced the wheel locking last year. Lime has claimed that they were not notified of these earlier events. If it could be established that these incidents last year had been notified to Lime, and that Lime did not act on those events, and that further, a Juicer was injured by a wheel-lock event, then Lime has a case to answer.

I think the sequence there is logical...

One of the problems with the "how about learning to type..." answers is that they don't work for everyone. I've never learnt to touch type because I have a congenital defect in both my hands - so I'm a two-fingered typer by simple necessity. My typing speed roughly matches my composition speed, so it works.
I don't hunch over my keyboard to type, and I am aware that even touch typers can develop aching across their backs from poor posture.

My type of workplace is the laboratory, and the rules around entry to the laboratory are that workers are required to wear the specified PPE wherever hazardous substances are being handled. Interestingly, 'being handled' does not automatically equate to being handled by you: the handling can be by someone else, and it can also conceivably be automated equipment as is suggested by WorkSafe in that article. As an example, by wearing safety goggles, I am effectively immune to something flicking across my face and hitting my eyes - it's worth noting that those safety glasses are theoretically capable of withstanding a low calibre bullet impacting them. So, why the PPE? Because my planning is based on the worst case scenarios - the equipment fails for an unknown reason.

I am also a holder of a Radiation User licence, and in the radiation laboratory, workers are required to use the specified gloves, a thicker barrier glove, and a lighter external glove that is discarded frequently. We are handling radioisotopes, and the use of those gloves acts as a shield against the low energy isotopes. For high energy Beta-emitters, perspex shielding is used, while for Gamma-emitters, a lead apron is worn in addition to using the Lead-dosed perspex. Why the PPE? In the case of the gamma radiation, all I can do is decrease the probability that I will be hit with a gamma photon, and every little bit helps me do this.

In a medical situation, some patients receive CT guided injections of steroids into their spines. The physician giving the injection is wearing a lead apron because they are sitting on a stool right next to the patient lying in the CT scanner. Why the PPE? Without that apron, the physician will, over their working year, receive a radiation dose considerably above the annual limit of 20mSv a year as averaged over 5 years.

There are times in which PPE is the first thought because of very valid reasons, and it is the responsibility of those in charge to be analysing the risks associated with the work, and be seeking ways to modify the risk profile of the tasks being undertaken such that the risk to the worker is decreased. While we might prefer to make a sweeping declaration that PPE is the lowest form of control on a hazard, sometimes it is actually the correct choice to make for the task at hand. None of this precludes the use of engineering controls, but the PPE will always be there as it's a back-up.

Incidentally, would anyone care to suggest why it's a bad idea to walk around in jandals on a building site?

Hello Everyone,
I was a member of the old forum for a fair number of years, so some may remember me. I work for a Crown Research Institute, Plant & Food Research, as a Laboratory Safety Advisor. I look after a fair number of Laboratory Managers, and have responsibilities for the management of hazardous substances, and as the Licensee for a Radiation Laboratory. I've been involved with the handling and management of hazardous substances since the last days of the pre-HSNO legislation (Dangerous Goods Act, Toxic Substances Act etc).

Thanks for setting the forum up again @Peter Bateman.